A light hearted record of my exploits or lack of, in FOGR. Painting and match reports.

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Border Reivers

Final game of day saw me drawn against Jerry who I know very well from my old club, Oxford. Jerry is a very long standing Wargamer of old but is often on the receiving end of banter relating to crossing the middle of the board. However, this phobia 🙂 is on the mend so I will have to be very careful.

I opted to move second as Venetians has the option to bring a few gendarmes and plenty of supporting artillery. I need to see where they go. So jerry opened proceedings with putting out some single units of light horse, one in each third of his deployment zone. Very sensible. A comical moment happened at this point. Jerry looking pleased with his spread of 3 LH was quickly squashed as I put out 5x units of LH as my first block out, against his one unit of LH in my left flank. Something, along the lines of. Your army is how big. I just grinned. I sent my three lancer cavalry units round my left flank. So things are are set nicely. Mmmm, we’ll see.

Jerry proceeded with a sensible deployment of putting units of gendarmes supported by two batteries of artillery on my left flank. His two Kiel’s and some LF in the centre to guard his baggage camp and a couple more LH out in my right flank. The only mistakes I think Jerry made where to move the LH in my right flank up onto the steep hill, thus taking them in effect out of the game. The other mistake I think was not to protect the artillery, but this ten would have restricted the options for his keils.

So, what happened. Jerry came forward with his army (eek) across the board. I push my left flank of LH (can LH count as being in a phalanx?) forward and start taking pot shots.

My centre units of LH push very aggressively down the open flank on the end of the keils. My right flank 2 units go and box in Jerry’s LH on the steep hill.

Jerry’s artillery has some effect, but with gendarmes eventually screening off the artillery targets. Jerry attacked on my left flank eventually pushing me back almost to my baggage camp. In the process Jerry takes a few units with well thought out individual attacks. Being LH saves the flank as I am able to shoot and scoot. Still no flank charge turning up. Getting nervous. While this is going on:

On my left centre I have managed get an overload of LH and push right round behind the keils. Eventually I take the baggage, artillery, his LH and start to threaten the rear of his successful attack down my left flank. The flank march rolls to arrive just in time before the end is called. Phew.

A very tight game with successes and failures for us both. I was able to fully utilise the movement and impact of massed LH. As known and again demonstrated the army lacks any “hold the line” troops. Future versions of the army will include either an English or Scottish ally.

Finished 7th overall and an improvement on last years outing with the army.

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So game 2 found me fighting the one army I wanted to avoid that weekend. Bob’s 100 years war english. Massed longbow. Although the effect could be same as WW1 machine gunners at village fair coconut shy stand. So how will I dig myself out of this one? Flank march. Let’s see.

So I sent three units of lancer cavalry off on a flank march round the right. See you latter lads. May be. Bob had very nice terrian layout. His flanks where secured by two very big woods. (Unless my flank march arrives hehe). So the English deployed with massed archers forward. Units of man at arms in support. A unit of gendarmes in main reserve and his one unit of LH skulking over behind the my right flank woods, nice and safe …until my flank march arrives. The LH was currently blocked in by archers and an early arrival of the flank march would cause all sorts of mayhem for Bob.

I deployed behind the terrian cover I case bob had chosen the artillery in his list and to give me two man manuover groups in case he came forward, I if fully expected him to do and darken the sky’s with arrows. As the quote goes. “We’ll be fighting in the shade then.”. So I don’t do much and neither does Bob, except to manuover units to protect against the flank march. Happy with this. Not fighting in the shade. I push a couple of units up to stop any chance of a massed march. We did have one point of excitement. My LH was able to get into position to take a few cheap shots at Bob’s gendarmes and a heavy foot unit. No casualties but it did get a reaction. Bowmen where brought over so we dropped back.

At about half way through the game, my flank march rolled to come on. Seeing the opportunity was gone to bully his LH and chance a breakthrough I brought them on my side of the board in support of my LH. The rest of the game was spent with me checker boarding the lancer cavalry and LH on the hill in preparation of the onslaught of longbows. Also I pulled my remaining LH from the left over. Bob wasn’t really coming forward and I certainly wasn’t going forward into that lot. Bob offered a draw, which I happily took. Clearly my Reivers had voted No last Thursday in the referendum.

A game played safe and controlled game and I would have come forward with that amount of longbowmen. I cannot challenge the style, too much as Bob finished 4th. In FOGAM I remember seeing Bob finishing regularly higher up the scores. A lesson to bear in mind. Sometimes attack is not always the best defense and a bit of restraint to see how things pan out does work.

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So the day began against Chris. I know of Chris and I knew I would be in for a very enjoyable game. The terrian, closed me down a bit. After the pre-battle initiative, I opted to move first. I needed to grab as much of the open space as possible. With the imperialists I was expecting some solid infantry tercio’s and possibly a keil. These would be supported by some mounted and possibly a decent artillery park. I was not disappointed.

I deployed on south side of the table. I positioned my baggage camp on the west (left) flank. Chris deployed his fairly central to the north. End of deployment found me with to large wings of mounted and a token presence in the centre. Chris deployed nice and tight around his terrian and two artillery batteries came out. Lovely, just what I needed.

So the plan was to rush his flanks and try to bully his heavily out numbered support mounted units while distracting the artillery with a sacrificial unit. Here during the game I made a few mistakes and in fact gifted Chris two extra units. My few units of lancer armed cavalry I used to provide support to the LH.

During the game the centre was fairly static. I used some of my LH to tie down his three blocks of infantry. I could not really damage these, but I was able to severely restrict their options of movement. The eastern tercio did advance to shoot in effectively at some (east/right flank) LH that was threatening his LF in the terrian. However this is where I made my big mistake of the game. Sensibly I positioned a unit of LH to absorb the artillery hits so that I could get my left flank attack in safely. But with some relaxed movement I ended up with two additional units breaking to the fire. Also I completely wasted my big unit of 6xLH defending the baggage camp in front of the artillery.

The west (left) flank: So in good LH style we clatter forward with about a third of my army. Chris two units where looking a bit nervous, but they had a nice piece of terrian to pivot their defence on. Using my extra numbers I started to slip a unit down the extreme western flank. Sniffing out in a very obvious way the flank of Chris’s units. Chris deployed on each flank, 1x LH unit and 1x heavy horse unit to work together. After a few rounds of shooting (I do like crossbow versus armoured mounted). Chris was forced into an outnumbered fight which the Reivers won. A unit was able to get round and start to threaten his baggage. Chris now had a dilemma. Turn his end tercio to block my move towards the baggage, but leave one battery artillery unprotected with my very, very close LH. Or give up the baggage camp. Hard one. Chris opted to defend the artillery. Eventually I broke through my left flank and was working my wAy round at the end of game.

The east (right) flank): I fancied my chances here as it was more open and I had no artillery to content with. I very aggressively and openly pushed my units down the extreme board edge. My inside units I worked up to get both a tactical advantage and a complete overload of units. Chris carefully moved his units around to try to block this as best as he could. Some slightly badly angled LH caused me some disruption because they did not have a clear path to evade and burst I to a following unit. It got to the stage where I had three units in danger of bursting round his line and his main fighting unit was tied up trying to hold off too many LH.

So, Chris decided to pick where the scrap would be and charged my better armed and supported LH with his single LH unit. I lost the impact against better odds and a general fighting. The unit held. Then we had few rounds of melee where I won some, he won some. I moved a unit found onto his flank ready to charge the his fighting unit from the side. And time was called.

After working out the score we ended up with a complete draw. I had lost more units in the end, but the size of my army (17 battle groups) meant percentage wise it balanced out. As I say a very enjoyable game with good and bad luck on both sides.

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Final scores from this years Southampton 1day round. Theme was 1450- to the end of the Italian Wars (ish). I took Border Reivers. Actual game write ups to follow later on this week. I fought, 1x Catholic Early Tercio army, 1x 100 years war English massed long bow army and a Venetian Tercio/Gendarme army.

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The final game of the day saw me against Marc’s Spanish. Lots of small units which will be hard for me to pin down with only a few units. The plan was to chance my arm on the left and hopefully draw in a few more units of Marc… This nearly ended in disaster, with me only managing to hold on and disengage and hope I did not run out board space. In the centre. The plan was to pin down the infantry. My main attack again went in on the right. Picking on the two units there. I did eventually manage to capture the camp and break in. I lost too many units. To be honest in a full 3.5hr game, I suspect my camp would have been captured. My bane, was the gendarme unit will even thou fragmented held me off just a little to long. A fun game in which I learnt a few things on how to use light horse against an army just as maneuverable as myself. Unfortunately the camera ran out of battery so only two pictures I am afraid.